Annela's comfortable and quiet black sneakers softly hit the tiles of the path in the middle of well maintained and healthy grass leading to the main building of the college. She attracts curious glances, her neatly pressed large white pants' light fabric floating around her thin long legs. A small practical handbag nonchalantly slung around her shoulder, she slides her round blue tinted sunglasses off her nose, to protect herself from the high late morning sun.

          She takes her time to observe her new terrain where she will be actively searching for an individual presenting "alarming mental control capacities", as described in the file she read the night before. The organisation for which she was working for procured itself a failed satellite in 1997: the Lewis satellite. As far as the rest of the world knows, during the month of July that year, the Lewis satellite fails after being launched from Vandenberg on an Athena rocket. No person but the members of the agency knows of its now functioning existence. Having sent a special team to fix the machine up to date, it's able to detect the actions of Controlers through the rays of emission of their power, unapparent to the human senses.

          Most of the college students were in a supine position, underneath the cool shades of the numerous trees. The breezy atmosphere held a lively vibration, laughs resonated, relaxed expressions painted themselves on faces, and tired light colored haircuts covered heads, by the water of the nearby ocean or individual swimming pools, and worn off by the beating sun, losing its strength of the summer to soon enter autumn. Hugs and handshakes and pats on the back were exchanged by the older students coming back for another year on their list, and keen eyes were observing their new environment like Annela for the new arriving students starting their journey to the professional world.

Annela swerved adroitly in the crowded main hallway she had just entered, avoiding physical contact naturally, as a reflex. It was almost lunch time, everyone was hungrily waiting for the cafeteria to open, where she was positioned by her superior to serve the platters of every intern. She introduced herself to the reception of the school to obtain a badge and checked the plan of the structure on a wall to find her way to the cafeteria. She registered herself on a sheet taped on a white tiled wall before entering the kitchen and listened to the instructions that were given by a plump woman with a red colored cheeks and chin. Annela reads Mrs. Dunn on her badge. The experienced workers left were dismissed earlier to get prepared and prepare the place and the three newcomers were kept a short while longer.

"We have around two thousand students waiting to be served, I want all of you to be on your best performance, work as fast and as efficiently as possible. This is what will it will be like throughout the whole year, so get used it," she firmly warns Annela and the two others on both her sides. They all nod. Mrs Dunn leaving her authority aside and warmly smiles and welcomes the three with a handshake of her clammy hand. The Asian young woman mentally crosses the chief of the kitchens out of the lists of suspects, having read her mind at the voluntary contact, made without a thought indicating she was a mind reader.

     They are directed to their lockers where they slide into their uniforms which consist of a white blouse and a net to hold their hair. On her left is a pale young lady, about her age. Her thin oval face is surrounded by her voluminous shoulder-long brown hair. Her red-dyed strands coupled with a piercing on the nose gives her a contumacious look.

"I can't believe we have to wear this hideous thing," she complains, holding the hair net. The man on Annela's right, with dark greasy hair pressed backwards and Indian origins, in his early thirties chuckles politely. Annela reads "Camilia" on the other young woman's badge.

"Well I wouldn't want to eat something that isn't on the menu," Annela points out, putting it on and walking over to her assigned post. She is serving the main course, composed of the choice of spaghetti, broccoli, beans, chicken, fish and even sandwiches. The students must be paying a fortune to have such a service, she thinks. They start arriving and the room starts filling with chatter and thoughts. With a magnetic card they pass on a detector, a machine lets them access a platter and they start queuing for food. The machine saves the order in which they pass.

She reluctantly opens her mind to the mental noise to help her reduce her list of suspects.

One... ...Eight... ... Thirteen...

Waiting during the few seconds the next person necessitates to arrive to her, she observes the immaculate enormous room for abnormal behaviors. The white ceiling is rather high, giving the place modernity and a great luminosity. The volume of the hubbub starts to rise but the mental noise not so much with their minds quieting down and relaxing thanks to the food. As she serves the interminable line of individuals, she tries to organize her strategy to lose the less time possible in finding the individual. The Paradox mustn't take advance in this matter. The organization who finds the newborn Controler first will undoubtably have a humongous asset.

She soon realizes she can't do much but stay aware for any strange behavior, considering she can't write down the list of people she crosses out, it'd arouse questions very quickly ; and remembering around two thousand people's names would be impossible and her mind would saturate with information. Her focus zones on an individual from time to time with a blank space at the place of thoughts, or one with weirdly numerous and chaotic thoughts going about all over the place in their minds. But all of the cases are people who either zone out or are sociably and anxiously awkward.

An hour later, people still keep coming in and Annela sighs at the scalpel of a mind she's going to have to find the needle in the haystack. She is obliged to repeat the same mechanical gestures, but it helps her keep her concentration on passing her radar on the crowd over and over again, trying to recognize and remember faces she'll be seeing everyday of her mission. After a few false alarms, Annela spots the strangely empty mind of a young man, back facing her.

          At his table his three friends often give out carefree and hearty laughs. He is slouched forward, back curved outwards stretching the fabric of his dark green T-shirt showing off his elegant back muscles. His neglected and tousled brown hair seemed to defy the laws of gravity.

          "Just spaghetti p-please," a thin young man feebly repeats, pushing his thick glasses back up his straight nose. Annela snaps back to the person in front of her. The short red haired individual was paining to place his voice above the deafening volume of the room.

          "Oh right, excuse me," Annela apologizes for her inattention, before directly gazing back at the student she was previously eyeing. She crosses eyes with two of the members of the table who turn to look at each other smiling to confirm that they were thinking the same thing. She enters the mind of the one talking.

          "... been eyeing you for a while," Annela manages to catch, form the smirking short but well built blonde facing the absentminded suspect. The mind, of the one who is addressed to by his friend, fills up. It's a false alarm again, Annela's shoulders defeatedly drop. The young man rotates around.

          I hope he isn't joking, he thinks to himself. Annela has time to see his light green eyes and a start of a surprised smile before called back to duty by a next person in the queue. Her head turns back to the group now all looking at her except the one facing her.

          "Felix, I dare you to invite her to my party," the boy next to him playfully laughs. His long curly light blonde, almost white hair shakes to his movements. He resembles the stereotype of the Australian surfer. The group loudly cheers Felix who shakes his head, chuckling under the friendly pats on the shoulders and back.

          "Nah." He firmly refuses, but his heartbeat starts accelerating.

          His friends whine, protest and encourage him.

         "Bro!" The dark brown headed guy next to the one facing Felix pleads.

          "Dude come on!" The brown eyed heavy looking young man facing Felix with a baseball cap turned backwards on his head shouts.

          "Guys, she works here," Felix points out.

          Annela doesn't leave her focus off the conversation she is the subject of, slowing down the pace of her actions because of the multitasking.

          "So?!" Surfer boy shrieks.

          "Scott-" Felix stars before being cut off.

          "It's not like there's a law that says you can't invite someone that works at your school," Scott retorts.

          Felix ponders on that a short while.

          "Yeah!" His other pal reinforces. "We know you want to."

          Felix unpredictably turns around, a wide smile appearing on his face as he turns back around after having made eye contact again with the amused black eyes of the young woman who somehow manages to look elegant in the hair net. He lays his elbows on the table and puts his head in his hands, fingers sliding in his hair, making it look even messier.

          "This is a stupid idea," he quietly mutters. His friends' eyebrows jump to the moon as they realize he's hesitating and about to give in. Their laughs resonate above the hubbub, attracting attention.

          "Shhhh! Guys please!" He chuckles. "It's hard enough without anyone looking."

          "Dude, you don't need to care about everyone else," the dark brown headed boy encourages.

          "You got this!" The one with the baseball cap nods, all smiles. Felix lets out a deep breath and stands up.